DND to form eLearning Partnership Lab with
U.S.Congratulations to Roger St-Pierre, Peter
Hope and the rest of the crew at the Defence Learning Network (DLN) in Ottawa
as an agreement is reach to form a research and development
partnership lab in collaboration with Advanced Distributed
Learning (ADL). The Canada ADL Partnership Lab will allow the
DLN to continue its contributions and work with SCORM, and
fittingly so, since DLN staff were integrally involved in
its creation in the first place. By Press Release,
Advanced Distributed Learning, April 4, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Student-Centred eLearning: But Not as We Know
It?This is such a delicious thought I can't
resist passing it along: "how would (and should) your
institution feel about the development of
student-controlled learning object repositories, archives
of past examination papers (perhaps incorporating
commentary), file uploads, and peer sharing facilities
etc?" By Derek Morrison, Auricle, April 16, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

A Manifesto for Collaborative
ToolsConsider the problem of file sharing:
despite the existence of many collaborate tools, we
continue to send email attachments. "If the tools that
purport to solve this problem are good, why aren't we using
them?" Because the tools forget about good software. John
Hibbs sent me this article the principles in which are as
applicable to e-learning software as collaboration tools.
Four basic rules are expressed: be people centered, be
willing to collaborate (with other software vendors),
create a shared language, and keep improving. "Computers
should help us become smarter and work together better." By
Eugene Eric Kim, Blue Oxen Associates, March 29, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

How to Start Your Own Blog
Describes what a blog is, why you would want
one, and what to do to get one. Many links and resources,
with the comments from readers pointing to more. By
Community Admin Team, Australian Flexible Learning
Community, April 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Be Afraid - Very Afraid! Be Excited - Very
excited!Do you use web tools at home because
they won't work through the school firewall? Do you spurn
the corporate LMS, opting to work with open source instead?
Do you turn your back on pre-structured content, allowing
your students to build their own learning? Do you play with
mobile learning technology? If you do, then you're
disruptive, and your innovation is described and celebrated
in this useful article. In the same vein, you may want to
check out the "Introducing disruptive technologies for
learning" symposium being planned by Seb Paquet and a
band of wikified co-conspirators for Ed-Media 2004. By
Marie Jasinski, Australian Flexible Learning Community,
April 5, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Une école et son cybercarnetOr, a
school and its blog. This post, in French, announces the
new blog system for the Centre d'Apprentissage du
Haut-Madawaska. Accessible here, the project is the result, in part,
of work by the NRC's Seb Paquet and Todd Bingham. Though
what you see looks simply like just another blog, if you
follow the links in the right hand column you find full class sets of blogs. The individual student blogs are still brand
new; it will be interesting where these go over time. Seb
notes that he will be writing about this on his site. By
Jacques Cool, ConstellationW3, April 14, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

National Parks as ClassroomsI
don't emphasize this as much as I should - online learning
will succeed when it gets students out of the classroom and
into the communities about which we are trying to teach
them. In this regard, programs such as the National Parks
Program play an increasingly significant role, as students,
supported by mobile e-learning, get out into the forest to
study the trees. If your picture of e-learning is row on
row of students in computer labs taking self-study modules,
change it. Online learning is about freeing students, not
tieing them down to computer labs. By Alison Yaunches,
Rural Roots, April, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

Tipping Point: From Feckless Reform to
Substantive Instructional ImprovementI really
liked this paper, which is in essence a condemnation of
centralized (and frequently top-down) 'strategic planning'
and 'school reform'. The author notes that there is
widespread recognition that this sort of process fails, and
that a more distributed type of short-term programs and
learning communities does more to promote learning. "School
improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when
teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly
concrete and precise talk about teaching practice...
adequate to the complexities of teaching, capable of
distinguishing one practice and its virtue from another."
By Mike Schmoker, Phi Delta Kappan, February, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

HowtoonsVia elearningpost, this
link is to a nice collection of 'how-to' comics for 5-15
year olds. Great stuff; I love the marshmallow shooter. By
Various Authors, April, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

The Future of Work: An 'Apprentice'-style
Office?This is something I have been advocating
as long as I have been advocating things: "Democracy and
freedom are coming to business." My view is that a nation
is not democratic unless its institutions are demcratic,
and these institutions include businesses and institutions
(which are currently run as dictatorships or fiefdoms). The
change, argues Tom Malone in his new book, The Future of
Work, comes about because of information technology. And
"this change may be as important for business as the change
to democracy has been for government." And it may be as
effective - if democracy is actually the best form of
governance, why don't we use it in our institutions? By
David Kirkpatrick, Fortune, April 14, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]

From Weird to Wired": MPs, the Internet and
Representative Politics in the UKIf elected
representatives only used the internet, one might suppose,
then they would see the benefit of online activities. But
do members use the internet? This study is a fascinating
exploration of the websites offered by British Members of
Parliament. While figures suggest that 71 percent of
Members have sites, a large number of sites are broken or
cookie-cutter Epolitix sites, reducing the actual number to
48 percent. Of these, few offered any sort of interaction,
almost no commentary on current issues, and were often out
of date. When government representatives don't see the
benefit of the internet for themselves, it seems to me,
they will be less likely to see the benefit in other areas
of endeavour. Many more papers on this topic are available
at the Internet, Political Organisations and
Participation page. By Stephen Ward & Wainer Lusoli,
April, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]